Dear Krita users and developers. I recently looked at an in-development version of Krita Gemini on Steam (ver. 2.9.5, git 1836aab) and want to give a small feedback. This refers primarily to the Tool Options which were moved from the dockers on the right side to the top bar next to the Brush Editor.
I use Krita with a Cintiq 21UX mainly for painting but also more and more professional to create and edit print data for a large format printer.

I can understand that you want to have a clean and uncluttered user interface. Unfortunately, those very very clear surfaces tend by their simplicity to make things more complicated. I'm not a UI-designer but I would make it to my goal that every function can be reached with few as possible clicks and mouse movements. Hiding the Tool Options is unfortunately exactly the opposite. On the one hand you have to re-tap the button at each change you want to make, on the other hand, the flip-out window is very small which makes an accurate setting of the slider by simply clicking almost impossible.
In addition the Tool Options are now relatively far away from the color picker and the Brush Presets. Sounds probably very banal but this can be very tiring if you have a large graphic tablet or a bigger Cintiq. You have to move your arm a lot just for changing some settings.

When I started this version of Krita for the first time, I thought the Tool Options are just gone through a bug. Fortunately a friend could tell me they just moved to the top bar.
Now just imagine how desperate a new user which just tried Krita for the first time would have been looking for it.
At least you can undo this change by an option in the Krita configuration.
However hiding essential functions by default is not a good idea.

All in all the current design of the user interface very reminds me of Corel Painter. I used this program sooner. But after some months with Painter I used Krita and GIMP again because many functions are hidden which makes working for me too cumbersome (you really have to click a lot and Krita has also much better performance).
Alternatively there could be an option for hiding the complete Docker-Bar (with a small button like in CorelDRAW) if you need more space or a cleaner UI.

I would be very happy if those in charge for the graphical user interface could discuss again about the changes.

Thank you.

HI Drayventhal,

Thank you for the feedback.

you can choose between docker or drop-down for the tools option in krita settings under general tab.
there is also a shortcut for tool-option drop-down its '\'.

There is still evaluation and testing going on for this re-arrangement, developers are taking feedback about this, it may or may-not be like this.

kamathraghavendra wrote:there is also a shortcut for tool-option drop-down its '\'.

Really?
I have installed Krita v.2.9.5.2 and it doesn't work at all.

Ha, this time stuart was faster than me with pushing out this change. The downloads on krita.org haven't been updated yet (because of, er, physical constraints). For 2.9.6, out next week, I'll make the tool option docker default again. In general, there seem to be two reactions to putting the tool options in the toolbar: love and hatred... Nobody has gone all meh yet

As I said in another forum thread, tool options are a bug bear for every paint application or image editor that follows the toolbox with tools approach. Photoshop moved the tool options from a palette to the toolbar between 5.5 and 6.0, and when I tried the latest CC trial, I couldn't find them anymore... I remember discussing the issue with Peter Sikking and he was like, oh yeah, this is the biggest issue we have in Gimp. Look at Calligra, there are now three approaches: docker, toolbar popup and a sort of integrated column (as words has now)

The thing is, tool options take a variable amount of space. That makes putting them top-right in the docker color problematic, because dockers don't rearrange automatically when resizing, and if the would do that, it would be distracting. Putting them bottom-right makes the docker fight for attention with the layer and brush preset docker which also need to be expanding.

It's a tough call, and no solution is really satisfactory -- especially when we are limited in the amount of work we can put into creating completely custom widgets. I remember we had a tool option docker that would slide back inside the window, leaving only a tab attached to the inside of the window frame. Very cool, but so buggy we couldn't make it work.

I think the best way (and probably the most complex) is to offer different solutions for this problem. So you can select what you like.
If you are an experienced user it's ok if you may want to hide some of this functions. But hiding the Tool Options (and other essential Tools) by default is especially for new users a pretty bad idea.
Also because experienced users are confused because their favorit functions are suddenly gone after an update.

I know there is no "perfect" solution and this is why it's important to keep the UI customizable by the user.
As long as you can choose between docker or toolbar there should be no real problem.
(But for the toolbar option: please make this popup window bigger. It's like clicking around on a postage stamp.)

Thank you for your answer